The internet is a beautiful resource that you can use in a myriad of ways to make your life better. Apart from being a medium and platform where you can benefit yourself socially, the World Wide Web can change your life both professionally and financially. One of the ways to achieve that is through blogging. If you’re considering starting a blog, there are more than just a few possible reasons you want to do so. Plus starting a blog is never a huddle these days, considering the numerous resources and tools to help you do so. You can choose to create one by yourself or even hire someone to do it for you. Let’s look at how to start your own blog, some reasons you may want to do so, as well as the pros, and cons that come with creating your own blog versus hiring someone for the job.

Some Solid Reasons to Start a Blog
There are more than a few reasons one may want to start a blog. This ranges from making money to finding a new hobby, making new friends, telling your story and much more. Here are some 5 solid reasons you’d want to start blogging.

• To Share Your Story: Everyone likes to be heard and perhaps, especially when they think they have an important message they need to pass across or share. A blog can serve as a means or platform through which you share your thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and experiences to a particular audience. If you provide value through your blog content, you will attract an audience. This can strengthen your social, professional foundation while potentially inspiring others as you continue establishing authority.

• To Make New Friends and Acquaintances: A blog can also be a platform through which you meet new people and establish new professional ties. With this, new opportunities for self-growth and the growth of others can be created.

• To Boost Your Professional Image: A blog can also act as a resume or a professional profile. It can help create a good professional image, especially when you provide content that portrays you as an expert on certain subjects.

• Financial Gain: Despite being viewed by many as a hobby, blogging can also serve as a business platform. When your blog attracts a huge number of readers or reaches a large audience, opportunities to monetize arise. You can advertise and market stuff through your blog. You can even promote your business or professional skills.

• More Exposure to Learning: Blogging will also make you more intellectually organized. Especially if you write content for yourself, it creates opportunities for further learning in certain areas with time as you move forward.

How to Start Your Own Blog: Important Steps
Starting a blog is not as hard as it used to be in the past. You only need to find a niche of topics you are interested in or the ones you think a target audience will love/benefit from. From there, you need to choose a blogging platform such as WordPress, come up with a domain name that is relevant and easy to remember and then choose a hosting option. From there, you will want to choose an interesting theme, and modify your blog site to give it a desirable look and feel. Next, you will need to discover and install the necessary plugins required for smooth operation of your blog. This is when you start producing and uploading content for your audience and you’re all set.

Creating Your Own Blog vs. Hiring Someone
As mentioned earlier, you can choose to create your own blog or hire a website designer for the job. Doing the former over the later comes with certain advantages as well as disadvantages. These include the following.

Advantages
• DIY is cheaper
• Your blog will have a personal touch
• Free or low-cost hosting is available
• Free ready-made themes are available

Disadvantages
• Takes more time than hiring someone for the project
• Custom functionality may be a problem

Conclusion
As you can see, starting your own blog isn’t as difficult as many perceive it to be. Plus the reasons you may want to do so are numerous. Even though your website may look more professional and perhaps have some additional features than a DIY website it will cost you more. So why not start your own blog today?

If you’re looking for a great way to get your computer protected from all the nasty spyware and malware that’s out there, then you’ll definitely want to look into a good antimalware software tool. There is just too much out there that can harm your computer or compromise the security of your computer and your files.

There are actually a few steps involved in securing your computer and keeping it safe from malware and viruses. One of the biggest is to ensure that you don’t get the malware in the first place. This starts with being smart about downloads, websites, and other areas of the internet. Don’t open email attachments that you don’t know about or aren’t expecting. Don’t go to shady websites or areas of the internet known for infecting computers (gambling, adult, etc). Don’t download torrents or other “free” software. As a matter of fact, so-called free software is often the worst, involving sneaky malware that will install itself along with the free program you were trying to get.

I highly recommend that you do not download anything that is not necessary. This is especially true if you like to download lots of things and software and games and music and free movies. This is the surest way to infect your computer.

The other thing to do is to get a good antimalware software program. These programs will defend your computer against the worst of the bad software attacks. I highly recommend that you install a program such as Spyhunter 4. This is an excellent software program that I have used myself in order to get rid of malware, spyware, and adware. If a client has bad software on their computer that they have to get rid of, I use this software program. I’ve used it to get rid of several bad software programs in the past, and they always keep it up to date.

Other good options are Malwarebytes and Avangate. However I still like to use Spyhunter for various reasons.

Another thing that you can do is to learn more about how viruses work and what makes them tick. Here’s a great excerpt from an article that talks about how they work:

VIRUS CHARACTERISTICS

To detect and sound appropriate alarms, you need to be aware of the characteristics of these viruses. There have been exciting changes in the virus environment and, simultaneously, additional risks to every organization exposed.

Macro and multiplatform viruses. When Microsoft introduced Word for Windows 95, some packages contained a virus called “Concept” or “Prank Macro.” Imagine one of the world’s leading software developers unleashing a virus in the wild. How could this happen? Nonetheless, Microsoft does not say it is a virus: It’s just a “prank macro,” and there is no reason for panic. Is it a virus or not? It is a virus because it replicates without the user’s permission.

Visual Basic, a programming language used with Microsoft products, is a great productivity tool, but it unintentionally threatens every user. When a Microsoft product is opened, it automatically can execute commands that enhance the user’s interface and productivity. Writing viruses with Visual Basic is revolutionary because it breaks virus rules. What rules? First rule, viruses cannot replicate with data files. If you view files on a continuum, the two extremes are system files and data files. In the past, there were not a great deal of files fitting in the middle. Rapid advancement using object oriented technology creates hybrid (object) files to increase productivity. In essence, a file can have data and executable code associated with it. Microsoft Word warehouses macros (Visual Basic) in templates because a *.DOC file cannot contain them. This template is an object file; it is not a program file or data file. Perhaps you were one of the “lucky” ones exposed to this virus. You may be asking, “If *.DOC cannot contain viruses, why did I see it in my data file?” The answer is that these viruses will infect your templates (*.DOT) and rename them with a *.DOC extension. A computer environment is similar to real life – things are not always as they appear.

The second rule violated is being able to replicate over different types of platforms (platform includes hardware and operating system software). The advanced features in Microsoft products that improve productivity allow these types of viruses to infect different types of operating software systems. Microsoft Word provides a version of its product for the Apple Macintosh as well as IBM clones. Files generated from these types of products can be read, executed, and infected by different platforms. Another example of multiplatform (hardware and software) virus transmission that has not occurred yet, but probably will soon, is from Internet software such as Java (which is very similar to C++ programming language). Java downloads programs (commonly referred to as applets) to your computer to perform dazzling effects on your monitor. Product management addressed this problem and placed some preventative security features in the product. However, significant risk still exists. Virus authors like a challenge! A virus replicating through this medium will receive an enormous amount of public attention.

If you have any questions about coding Django we realize that a lot of them can be cleared up by watching a few live coding videos. This helps to learn the overall theory and flow. Can be a bit dry, but you learn a lot.

It’s interesting to look at how attitudes towards nuclear weapons and their use has changed quite a bit since the cold war and the 1980’s. However since the recent change of tune in Russia and the rise of Putin, it seems our attitudes are set to change once again. It’s informative to look back on some articles of the time to see just how people looked at the historical implications:

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Officially, the West remains firmly committed to the initiation of nuclear combat in response to a Soviet conventional attack. But public support for this policy has already dissipated as a result of growing concern that it would result in a catastrophic nuclear war. Polls taken in 1981 and 1982 show that the strategy of using such weapons first is supported by less than 20 percent of the public in France, Germany, England, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. “I do not believe that Western public opinion will long continue to support a defense strategy that relies too much on nuclear weaponry,” remarks Canadian Admiral Robert Falls, a former chairman of NATO’s military advisory committee.

Public opposition to a primarily nuclear deterrent has not yet been translated into formal government support for a primarily conventional deterrent. But advocates of this viewpoint abound, and they are beginning to have an impact. Former U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara, former national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, and former British chief of staff Lord Carver are among those who have recently urged that NATO repair or overhaul its nuclear strategy. Even the Reagan Administration, which initially emphasized only nuclear weapon modernization, is increasingly interested in improving conventional forces so as to delay the moment in battle when it seems necessary to resort to nuclear weapons. “Not that we’ll ever get to the position where we won’t eventually have to rely upon theater nuclear weapons to defend ourselves, but as a minimum we ought to be able to raise the threshold so we won’t have to cross it as quickly as we must now,” says General Bernard Rogers, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

Perhaps the most articulate and enthusiastic supporter of a conventional defense in Western Europe is Robert Komer, a former security analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency who has also served as a staff member for the National Security Council, a special assistant to the President, an under secretary of defense for policy, and a U.S. ambassador to Turkey. A flamboyant public speaker, Komer, 62, has long been a popular figure on the NATO lecture circuit. He argues repeatedly that raising the nuclear threshold is not only feasible but imperative. “NATO’s failure to adapt itself to the realities of nuclear stalemate will over the long run seriously erode its deterrent credibility–its very reason for existence,” he says. “It’s time we realized that nuclear deterrence has been a wasting asset since the time it was first adopted.”

Sporting a bow tie and gesturing wildly with his pipe, Komer typically begins by dispelling the popular impression that the Warsaw Pact enjoys an overwhelming advantage over the West in conventional firepower. This conclusion has been nourished, he says, by armchair analysts who point to numerical Warsaw Pact advantages in combat troops, missiles, aircraft, tanks, and artillery, and then conclude, mistakenly, that a conventional defense is either financially or tactically impossible. A proper comparison takes into account the quality and firing capacity of the weapons, the skill of the personnel, and the geographical obstacles faced by an attacker, he says. As other analysts have pointed out, when these factors are taken into account, the West is actually superior in tactical air power and the Pact’s 2:1 or 3:1 advantage in personnel and ground-based weapons shrinks to less than 1.2:1, even by the Pentagon’s own measurements (1). This is well below the 3:1 to 6:1 advantage that General Rogers describes as the minimum necessary for a successful infantry attack.

Komer believes that “a high-confidence non-nuclear defense is indeed feasible,” but he cautions that there are two complementary ways to go about it, and the Reagan Administration seems interested in only one. Backed by a coalition of technology enthusiasts and large weapons contractors, the Administration wants to raise the nuclear threshold by developing a large variety of so-called smart weapons capable of destroying targets deep in enemy territory from launch pads in Western Europe. As Rogers recently explained to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the idea is “to target and strike deep in the enemy’s rear . . . with very accurate, very destructive conventional warheads, interdicting choke points, bridges, railroad yards, and disrupting, delaying, or destroying their forces as they move forward toward the battle area.””

Obviously there are newer technologies available now, and that changes the game. With the advent of cybercrimes and hacking, the nuclear age is now in a new frontier. We all know that nukes would wipe out the world in about 5 seconds, however are they even necessary anymore given climate change and global disasters caused by hacking?

Welcome to the new blog! This is where we will be talking all about Django and other assorted subjects. We also want to welcome contributions from our readers! If you have anything you would like to see written about on this blog then we really want you to contribute! We definitely suggest writing your own articles for publication and the like. We want to see YOUR opinion!

We are going to be talking about online security, pets, fashion, and anything else under the sun. Yes, this is a broad range of subjects, but isn’t LIFE a broad range of subjects?